A North Shore man who tried to bribe a police officer with $10,000 has been handed a one-year conditional sentence.
Judge Doug Moss of the North Vancouver provincial court handed the sentence to Houman Rahmani, 26, on Monday in the unusual case.
Rahmani admitted that he offered to pay a West Vancouver police officer to let him go after Rahmani was arrested for breaching his bail curfew.
According to an agreed statement of facts, Rahmani was picked up by police for being out past the allowed time on Nov. 9 last year. When he complained of chest pains, police took Rahmani to Lions Gate Hospital.
In hospital and alone under the watch of Const. Aaron Takeda, Rahmani suggested he'd be willing to pay the officer to release him.
When Takeda dismissed the suggestion, Rahmani became increasingly persistent about the bribe offer, according to Crown counsel Kristin Bryson, and told Takeda he could arrange for $10,000 to be brought to the hospital if the officer would allow him to leave.
Ultimately, Rahmani asked Takeda how much money he'd have to pay the officer to let him go.
In the statement of facts, Rahmani said he didn't have the cash on hand at the time he made the offer and would have had to get a loan to carry out the bribe but "he would have completed the transaction had Const. Takeda been receptive," said Bryson.
According to a pre-sentence report, Rahmani made another offer to a corrections officer while he was being held in North Fraser Pre-Trial Centre last summer, asking the officer if there was anything he could do to get more privileges. When the officer said no, Rahmani told him, "Give me your account number and I'll put some money in it."
The report described Rahmani's attitude while in custody as feeling that "he should be entitled to whatever he wants whenever he wants it," said Bryson.
Rahmani's defence lawyer asked for a suspended sentence, noting Rahmani has been diagnosed with mental illness. Moss ordered Rahmani to serve the first six months of his sentence under a curfew, complete 150 hours of community service work and write a letter of apology to the police officer he tried to bribe.
